Abstract
The presence and thickness of petroleum products in groundwater monitoring wells has been used to delineate areas of contamination and to estimate the volume of contaminant by nearly everyone involved with the cleanup of petroleum-contaminated groundwater. However, as long ago as 1967 when J. Van Dam1 theorized on the migration of hydrocarbons in groundwater, it has been suspected that petroleum thickness in monitoring wells (“apparent” thickness) was not representative of the “actual” thickness on the water table. The existence of the water-bearing capillary fringe that occurs at the surface of the groundwater table was postulated by Williams and Wilder2 to effectuate the discrepancy between “actual” and “apparent” petroleum thickness in their 1971 case study. More current publications by Yaniga and Warburton3, and Blake and Hall4 have helped make the capillary fringe’s effect on apparent petroleum thickness a generally accepted phenomena. However, visual proof concomitant with quantitative information has heretofore been very sparce or nonexistent.
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J. van Dam: The Migration of Hydrocarbons in a Water-Bearing Stratum. The Joint Problems of the Oil and Water Industries. Symposium proceedings, P. Hepple (ed). Brighton, January 1967.
Williams D.E. and Wilder D.G.: Gasoline Pollution of a Ground-Water Reservoir-A Case History. Ground Water. Vol. 9, No. 6. 1971.
Yaniga P.M. and Warburton J.G.: Discrimination Between Real and Apparent Accumulation of Immiscible Hydrocarbons on the Water Table: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis. 4th National Symposium and Exposition on Aquifer Restoration and Ground Water Monitoring. Columbus, Ohio. 1984.
Blake S.B. and Hall R.A.: Monitoring Petroleum Spills with Wells: Some Problems and Solutions. 4th National Symposium and Exposition on Aquifer Restoration and Ground Water Monitoring. Columbus, Ohio. 1984.
Bannister W.W., Donatelli A.H., Curby W.A., Kan D.L., Dalton W.J. and Porta D.A.: Three New Technologies for Floating Pollutant Spill Control and Recovery. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA-600/S2–83–115. Dec 1983.
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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Milligan, J.D. (1988). Use of Fluorescing Agents to Study Actual and Apparent Petroleum Thicknesses in Laboratory Columns. In: Wolf, K., Van Den Brink, W.J., Colon, F.J. (eds) Contaminated Soil ’88. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2807-7_44
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2807-7_44
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7763-7
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